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Penguins are – or used to be – perfectly adapted to their environment, swimming as naturally as fish while staying dry due to oil they spread over their feathers.

Adults can easily stay warm while swimming for months at a time in the freezing Southern Ocean.

However, they aren’t born waterproof, and changing weather in Antarctica is putting them at risk, ecologist Rudolf Thomann, 62, told metro.co.uk.

Penguin chicks are born with downy feathers, meaning they struggle in the rain (Picture: Getty)

Chicks still have downy feathers, which means getting wet in the rain can prove fatal to them. If they become waterlogged, they can easily freeze to death in conditions below zero.

This sad outcome is something that scientists and guides working in Antarctica are noticing more and more as the continent warms up.

‘I’ve seen it start to rain, and all the poor chicks get completely wet,’ Rudolf said.

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An ecologist from Chile, he has been a guide in the polar regions for 20 years, currently working with Hurtigruten.

Rudolf working as a guide on the Antarctic Peninsula (Picture: Jen Mills)

Tourists visit Antarctica during the Austral summer, which coincides with breeding season for penguins.

‘Before, no matter what point in the season you would always have snow,’ he said. ‘It rained maybe a third of a time, and two thirds of the time it snowed.

‘Now, that ratio is inverted and the penguin chicks are affected. They can cope with a little bit of water, but it’s different if you take a shower three times a day, or once every second day.’

Chicks are able to shake snow from their feathers easily, but rain permeates closer to their bodies.

‘When they have moulted, it’s no problem,’ Rudolf explained. ‘But if this happens during the summer when they’re not completely protected against rain, it’s not good.’

Antarctic penguins are designed for snow (Picture: Jen Mills)

A typical itinerary for a cruise in Antarctica might take in Half Moon Island, Deception Island and Damoy Point – places which would have been consistently covered in snow 20 years ago.

Now, later in the season the snow is likely to have melted so the glacier ice beneath is exposed, Rudolf said.

Antarctica and the Arctic are warming up at a higher rate than the the rest of the world. In the last 50 years, average air temperature has risen around 3C in the Antarctic Peninsula. That’s five times the mean rate of global warming as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

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‘If this trend carries on, we could be in big problems in a matter of 20 to 30 years,’ Rudolf said.

An Adelie penguin chick with its mother (Picture: Getty)

More rain isn’t the only way climate change is threatening penguins.

Researchers found a decline of more than 50% since the 1980s in one chinstrap penguin colony on Deception Island.

‘At first researchers thought tourism was responsible, but then they contrasted the information with temperatures, and it is climate change,’ Rudolf said.

The picture is complicated, as certain penguins, like gentoos, seem to be doing better on the peninsula while chinstraps struggle.

Scientists believe the change could be due to a reduction in the amount of krill available for penguins to feed on.

Krill feed on algae below the sea ice, and if there’s less ice because of warmer temperatures, then there is less krill around for the penguins.

We don’t fully understand the exact impact of the effect of krill on penguin populations, and what is leading to their decline, as it is difficult to make detailed studies in such a harsh environment.

However, scientists are trying to understand the different ways climate change and potential loss of krill feeding is already affecting penguins.